Dubai: DAMC Sportbike series – Tannir Moto Racing: Rain Affects Play

Nov 26, 2013

Another day of mixed fortunes for TM Racing

After making progress with the set-up required to suit the new D212 tyres at the test day the previous Friday, TM Racing were looking forward to making more progress during the test day on Thursday. Sadly the weather hadn’t read the script and with the track a wash form the heavy rain, the team set-up their pits and retired early for the day hoping Fridays forecast of even worse weather was going to be wrong. Still it did give Scott (the teams photographer) to shoot some time lapse pictures of the pit set-up for the race day video.

Well the weather didn’t appear to want to play ball as the proverbial cats and dogs were falling form the skies early in the morning. Still the team had every confidence it would dry up……….. Well would you believe it, out came the sun and with that the track started to dry out. The Autodrome had arranged for extra tankers and made serious efforts to remove the standing water from the track. Due credit to the circuit as they were able to commence the racing on the shorter club circuit but at least there would be racing.

The timetable was amended which resulted in the bikes having their warm-up at 13:10 and qualifying at 14:10. Warm-up saw Mahmoud quickest by 0.6 seconds with the tyres being in good shape, so things were looking up. Qualify saw Mahmoud qualify in 2nd place behind the flying Saudi Falcon that is Abdulaziz. The right hand side of the rear tyre was destroyed however so the tyre was flipped round for the race. The team had tried their usual rear tyre pressure which clearly didn’t work in terms of tyre life. For the race the warm-up pressures would be used.

The warm-up lap saw Mahmoud try and get as much heat into the tyres as possible which caused him to have a big moment entering turn 2 (all caught nicely on the GoPro cameras thank you). Still, Mahmoud took the hole shot when the lights went out, still Abdulaziz on his rocket ship ZX6R overtook Mahmoud before turn 1. Sadly turn 2 saw Omar and his bike crash on the entry to turn 2. Omar got away with bruises and 1 slight graze, the major damage might occur when he got home to his family…..

The next lap at the same spot saw Chris dive past on the brakes but run wide onto the curb. Chris was a “little” early on the throttle which caused the rear of the bike to slide and then grip, resulting in Chris being thrown over the top of his bike in a classic “high side”. The result being a dislocated shoulder and a grazed elbow.

Rather than red flag the race, the race director decided to use the Code 60 (all riders are supposed to ride at 60 kph) but with the altered gearing on the bikes no rider actually knew what 60 kph was. This resulted in the top 4 riders all bunching up for a sprint to the chequered flag. Despite Mahmouds best efforts he could not improve on his 4th place before the chequered flag.

All that was left was for the team to pack everything away and think about what needs to be done to the tyre pressures / suspension settings before the next race day so that the team can return to its winning ways.